ENGLISH COUNTRY GARDEN

I needed cheering up with the cold and snow and now miserable rain out there, so decided to create a typical English summer garden for myself. Washed colours of acrylic ink onto a sheet of Lana Vanguard and then had fun playing and layering!! How many plants can you name????

SELECTION OF GOURDS

Jayne gave me some gourds to fill my long thin table dish that my sister in law gave me for the lounge coffee table. I purchased some Diamine saddlers brown soluble ink last week, filled my LAMY pen and sketched them in that, spreading a little colour with a waterbrush, keeping Clive company in the lounge as he is not too well at the moment.













Then during the ladies group yesterday afternoon, we decided to paint some of the gourds. With brush only I did a watercolour of two in my garden sketchbook, as there is not much peeping through the snow in the garden at present! Helen did all four on the tray in oil and Philippa in watercolour. A good afternoon was had by all, with Maggie painting some yellow roses she had brought with her.

WATER CARRIERS IN INDIA

Spent time over at Laura's last week whilst our grand daughter was being born, but since being back have worked on my latest piece using as a reference an archive photo of an acrylic I did a number of years ago of water carriers we met during a visit to Fatipur Sikri in India.

This latest version is mixed media, using acrylic inks on Lana Vanguard, plus oil pastels and soft pastels with addition of gold and torquoise glitter on two of the saris. I had fun creating their shadows onto each other rather than just on the road and, as you see, changed the format and colours of the saris and made the road and background much softer. I do enjoy making things up as I go along!

This is the original framed acrylic piece sold at a gallery in Holt during 2004:

Now I am searching for some photos I took of ladies in coloured saris carrying firewood on their heads beside a lake in the mountains. Think I'll have to resort to getting out the DVD we took and using a still from that for my reference plus my memory of this magical 'happenstance' as we were driving through.